BEIJING — If the Chinese men’s basketball team should somehow surprise and win an Olympic medal, chances are it would be a matter of national pride — both here and in the United States, where four of the team’s players, as well as assistant coach Donn Nelson, have ties to the NBA.

Similarly, if the U.S. women’s volleyball team wins a medal, chances are there will be thunderous cheers for the team because they are coached by Lang Ping, a national hero from her days as a star player in China.

Talk of the medal race is a constant at every Olympics. But given the amount of cross-training and coaching that takes place, all the fervor about athletic superiority between nations is really somewhat misleading.

Whether it’s former Colorado State basketball star Becky Hammon of Rapid City, S.D., hooping it up for Mother Russia, or distance runner Bernard Lagat, an emigre from Kenya, using the coaching of China’s James Li in hopes of winning the 1,500 meters for the U.S., the Olympic flame now burns under one big melting pot.

“It’s what I call ‘coaching globalization,’ ” said Steve Roush, chief of sports performance for the U.S. Olympic Committee. “It doesn’t take a news flash to figure out that if someone gives you a better chance to improve, you should bring them on.

“You always aspire to win, but the Olympics are unique in that another aspect of them is the obligation to improve sports worldwide.”

And so, if China needs a baseball coach to lead the way for its first Olympic berth, who better to reach out to than Jim Lefebvre, a former major leaguer? Similarly, the Chinese national basketball team has long been the province for foreigners on loan — in 2004, the team was led by longtime NBA head coach Del Harris. This year, China’s head coach is Lithuanian Jonas Kaz- lauskas, assisted by Nelson, the son of Hall of Fame coach Don Nelson.

“I’m just the luckiest guy in the world to be able to be a small part of this,” said Donn Nelson, who has been the chief adviser for the Chinese national team the past four years. “We’ve got one of the best teams they’ve ever assembled here. And we just want to do their country proud.”

But even though Nelson said he has made every effort to assimilate himself into the ways of his Olympic employers — “I’ve eaten about everything that walks, crawls, swims or flies” — there is a line he won’t cross. During the 2000 Games in Sydney, Nelson coached a Lithuanian team that had a shot at the buzzer to beat the U.S. Had the ball nestled through the hoop, it would have been the Americans’ first Olympic loss since 1988.

After that experience, Nelson swore he would never coach against the U.S. again. Indeed, he wasn’t on the bench last week when Team USA thumped his China team.

Spanning the globe

Sometimes, sharing knowledge can be essential to a sport’s survival. This is the last scheduled year for softball as an Olympic sport, a decision made by the International Olympic Committee in part because the U.S. team is too good.

As a result, it has been incumbent upon the team’s players and coaches to take softball around the world to help lift the sport. Not long after the Beijing Games end, U.S. coach Mike Candrea will host a delegation of softball officials from Latin America. A short time later, he will fly to Great Britain and Italy to conduct clinics. The hope is to convince the IOC that true competition exists in the sport and to get it reinstated.

“What really raised the bar in our game in the States was when people started to go out and share information,” Candrea said. “When I started in the game, I think everyone thought they had the secret. That changed in the U.S., and it needs to change internationally.”

According to the USOC, some 3,600 foreign athletes, representing sports from both the Summer and Winter Olympics, will visit its training center in Colorado Springs this year. That creates a virtual pipeline of information and coaching techniques in any number of sports spreading from Colorado throughout the globe.

When the visitors come, it’s not like the American coaches and officials hold back their best stuff. If a foreign fencer or wrestler picks up a move or a different way to impress the judges in his discipline in the U.S., and then takes it back to his country and later uses it to beat an American in the Olympics, well, so be it.

“It makes our job more challenging, but I don’t see that as a negative,” Roush said. “We’re OK with it because ultimately it makes our athletes better. It forces us to be smarter about how we go about doing what we do.”

A two-way street

And obviously, there’s nothing to stop the U.S. from taking part in the cultural exchange of knowledge either. All four members of the American table tennis team were born in China, led by Gao Jun. Gao now lives in Maryland, but in 1992 she won a silver medal for China. The team’s coach, Teodor Gheorghe, was born in Romania.

Roush admits there are some sports that have shown reluctance to climb aboard the immigrant flotilla, though he adds that the number “is fewer and fewer” by the year.

One example of that is archery. That sport has been long dominated by South Korea. When China’s Zhang Juanjuan won the women’s individual gold medal last week, it marked the first time since 1984 that someone from a nation other than South Korea triumphed.

Even so, it wasn’t until after the 2004 Games that South Korean Kisik Lee, whose archers have won nine gold medals in the previous 20 years, was hired as the U.S. coach.

“Recognizing his value was significant in terms of changing the techniques and styles used in the U.S.,” Roush said.

WASHINGTON — Thirty games into the 82-game NHL season, and nearly six weeks after the Matt Duchene trade, Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic discussed the state of his team before Tuesday’s 5-2 loss at the Washington Capitals.